Missed Connections
by Reinamy's Cloud
Summary: "Inuyasha…unless you know another 'gorgeous guy in a red sweater with dog ears' then I'm pretty sure this Craigslist post is about you." Modern AU.


**Title:** Missed Connections

**Author:** Reinamy

**Pairing:** Inuyasha/Kagome, minor Miroku/Sango

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warnings:** Modern AU, mild language, pairing-centric, romance-like-whoa, clichés galore, un-beta'd, etc.

**Summary:** "Inuyasha…unless you know _another _'gorgeous guy in a red sweater with dog ears' then I'm pretty sure this craigslist post is about you."

**Disclaimer:** This is non-profitable fan work. No copyright infringement intended.

**Author's Note:** Just a bit of silly fluff that ended up longer than it should've. This is going to be a two-shot, guys. Also, it's set in New York City because I was watching the New Year's ball drop over Times Square on TV and just felt inspired. So not sorry. Anyway, Happy New Year, everyone! Make it a super special one!

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><p><strong>PART ONE<strong>

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><p><strong>SUBJECT: <strong>**Gorgeous guy in a red sweater w/ dog ears - w4m [21] (Union Square)**

_Early this evening you were on the opposite side of the tracks. Your red sweater stood out like a flame in a dark room. The book you were reading was awful if your expression of distaste was anything to go by and I couldn't help it: I laughed. _

_You looked up with a scowl and saw me and I immediately felt self-conscious. Not because you overheard me, but because I was wearing baggy sweats and an old Doctor Who t-shirt and my hair was an absolute mess and you were just so breathtakingly gorgeous in comparison._

_And then your scowl faded and you started to smile, and I couldn't bring myself to care anymore. We stared at each other until the uptown-bound L-train came and I had to board it. I don't think I've ever regretted anything as much as I regret leaving without knowing your name, or how to contact you._

_The likelihood of you stumbling upon this is slim but I'll be crossing my fingers that you do. And maybe then, if you're interested, we could get coffee together. _

* * *

><p>"Hey, Sango?"<p>

"Yes?"

"Could you come over here for a moment, please?"

Sango looked forlornly at her untouched sandwich before stepping away from the kitchen table and padding into the living room. As he'd been for the past hour or so, her husband was sat, cross-legged, at the end of the couch with his laptop perched atop his knee. Sango wasn't naïve enough to think he was working on his latest manuscript. All she could hope was that he wasn't about to show her more poorly choreographed pornography.

Without looking at her, Miroku pat the seat next to him insistently. Sighing, she sank into the cushion and peered at the screen.

"Not another porno, I hope," she said dryly, leaning into him to get a closer look.

"Not this time," he assured her absently. _That _piqued her interest; usually Miroku was all too eager to protest any and all accusations of him being a raging pervert. Whatever had caught his attention must have been interesting.

After several seconds of impatiently watching him text, he finally shifted the laptop to his opposite knee and slanted it towards her.

"What's this?" she murmured, scanning the screen. "Craigslist? Don't tell me you're finally going to sell that scrap of metal in the garage."

Miroku squared his shoulders and recited the same thing he'd been telling her since they moved in together nearly three years ago. "That _scrap of metal _is a 1957 Chevrolet Corvette! It's a first generation fuel-injected three-speed that has—"

"Missed Connections?" Sango read aloud, deliberately ignoring him. Miroku would talk about that ugly, _unusable, _waste-of-perfectly-good-garage-space for hours if she let him.

Disgruntled at the interruption, her husband returned her attention to the computer. "It's this sub-space on Craigslist where people can post personal ads about themselves in hopes of connecting with people they've met but for whatever reason couldn't get their contact information. So for example, a girl sees a cute guy at a bar but is too shy to give him her number, she then posts an ad describing the situation in hopes that he'll see it and respond."

That sounded…unpractical. Sango said so.

"It's not a very lucrative way of going about things, no," Miroku said with a small chuckle. "Especially in large cities such as this where dozens of people post on a daily basis. The girl in the scenario would be lucky if the guy even browses the column, and luckier still if he found her post among the hundreds of others."

"Then what's the point?" Sango asked bewilderedly, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. It sounded like a waste of time to her.

"Hope, of course," Miroku said instantly. He placed a palm against her knee and squeezed. "Hope that the connection wasn't one-sided, that it meant something, and that it would lead to something good."

Sango was still dubious. "I guess. I still think it's pointless, though. I mean, given what you said, the statistics of an ad being responded to by the actual recipient…"

"Before you finish that sentence, I want you to read this." Miroku pushed the computer onto her lap and tapped on a small, yellow star with the date _December 22 _printed next to it.

"Yesterday…?" She read the subject line and promptly froze. She read it again. And then _again, _because surely not.

"Oh my god," she breathed, lifting the screen as if the meaning of the words would change if she angled them differently. She quickly clicked on the link and read its contents, eyes growing wider by the sentence.

"Is this…could this _really_…I mean, _are you sure?"_

Miroku grinned broadly. "Absolutely. When I met up with Inuyasha yesterday he was completely out of it. After much nagging on my part—"

Had Sango been less shocked she would have laughed at that.

"—he _still _refused to divulge the cause for his distraction. However, I _did _manage to get something out of him. I didn't understand it then so I dismissed it, but now…well, it makes sense in this context."

"Well, what did he say?" Sango demanded, ready to throttle her husband for being vague.

Violet eyes shining in amusement, Miroku answered, "He said, '_I was too fucking slow.' _That's it._"  
><em>

Miroku was right. By itself it was a single puzzle piece. Only by joining it with another piece could a picture start to form.

"Are you going to tell him?" she asked, stomach fluttering with excitement. Sango was hardly the most romantic person—of the two of them, Miroku had always been more predisposed towards such things—but she was not altogether immune, especially where her friends were concerned.

As far as she was aware, it had been _years _since Inuyasha had spared a second glance at a woman. Not since his disaster of a relationship with Kikyo. Sango re-read the woman's message for the fourth time and bit her lip. She felt a little guilty for thinking it, but already she liked this person more than she'd ever liked Inuyasha's ex. It wasn't that Kikyo had been a bad person, per se; she'd just been…reserved.

Sango had never even met this girl but already she could tell she was _warm_ in a way Kikyo had never been.

"I'm already calling him," was Miroku's response, and only then did Sango hear the faint sound of ringing. Her husband glanced mischievously at her before he put his phone to his ear.

"_What do you want, Miroku?"_ she heard the hanyou snap upon picking up.

"Hello to you, too, Inuyasha. How was my day, you ask? It's been wonderful. Why, just this morning—hey!"

Sango flung herself and the captured phone to the opposite end of the couch and thrust her leg out to keep Miroku at bay. "Hey, Inuyasha. Sorry about that."

A pause, and then, _"Sango? What's going on?"_

She took a moment to consider how best to answer that. "Nothing bad. Just…Miroku found—ow!" She nearly dropped the phone _and _laptop in her haste to tug her foot out of his grip. "What the hell, Miroku! You _bit_ me!"

"_Oi, I don't want to hear these kinds of things!"_

"I did no such thing," Miroku blatantly lied. "Now, are you going to let me get close so I can at least _hear _his side of the conversation?"

"Are you going to bite me again if I don't?" Sango snapped, looking between her husband and the ankle he'd violated.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he denied. Sango translated that to mean _yes. _

"Fine," she relented. "But put your mouth anywhere near my person and we're not having sex for a _week._"

Miroku looked stricken.

Sango put the phone back to her her ear. "Sorry about that, Inu—oh. He hung up."

"Call him again," Miroku advised, laying down so that his head rested on her lap. "And this time put the phone on speaker."

Sango input Inuyasha's speed dial number and rolled her eyes.

**x-x-x**

"_Inuyasha…unless you know another 'gorgeous guy in a red sweater with dog ears' then I'm pretty sure this craigslist post is about you."_

"Just send me the damn link already!" Inuyasha snarled before snapping the phone shut. He stared at it for a moment, then set in on airplane mode and tossed it to the opposite end of the couch. He then looked to his laptop hovering dangerously close to the edge of the coffee table and after a moment of deliberation, picked it up.

He tried not to think about the way his stomach tightened when he saw a new message waiting in his inbox, subject line reading: Y_ou're welcome. _His claws hovered over the touchpad for a moment before he scolded himself for behaving like a preteen girl and opened it. Inside held a single link, and after some hesitation, he clicked on it.

The link opened to a new window where the familiar Craigslist logo came to life on the tab. Like most people who had internet access and a bit of free time, Inuyasha was well acquainted with Craigslist. It's how he found the apartment he was currently living in, and though he would never admit it to _anyone, _there was usually much amusement to be found in the _Personals_ sub-section. _Rants and Raves _was a particular favorite of his, and for a time the _Person Seeking Person _categories had been, as well.

He'd only spent a short amount of time exploring the _Missed Connections' _ads before turning his attention elsewhere. It was probably why he never would have considered that someone might actually publish a post there about _him. _

If this turned out to be the real deal…Inuyasha might seriously end up owing Miroku something huge.

Since yesterday Inuyasha had felt nothing but regret for not asking that girl's number before she got onto the train. It was stupid—he didn't even _know _her. She was just a girl—albeit a pretty one—who'd caught his eye because she'd had the audacity to _laugh at him _for making faces at the monstrosity they were calling the current New York Times Bestseller. And then she'd held it, because she was fucking _gorgeous, _even dressed like she might have just come from the gym.

A day later and Inuyasha still couldn't get her eyes—large and almond-shaped and the color of slate—out of his head. Beneath the overhead lights they'd looked almost _silver, _fanned by thick, dark eyelashes. And when her lips had curled up at the corners, sweet yet somehow not shy, wide enough to push her dimples to the surface…Inuyasha had wanted nothing more than to cross to her side of the platform in a single leap and ask her name.

But he hadn't, and he'd been pretty damn sure he was never going to see her again.

That is, until Miroku called to say that some woman had posted an ad about him in the _Missed Connections_ column. A woman that Inuyasha desperately, inexplicably wished was her.

He read the subject line and had to concede that it _was _most likely about him. He was the only hanyou with dog ears in the city—that he knew of—and even if he weren't, the likelihood that the other had _also _worn a red sweater and had been in the Union Sq. station at that exact time was slim.

Inuyasha read the message once, then a second time to ensure he hadn't missed anything, then a third time to re-process it, and finally a fourth _just because. _

_This is her, _he thought, dragging sweaty palms against his jeans. This was definitely, definitely her, and he couldn't help the smile that spread across his face because it wasn't just him who'd felt that way, after all_. _

_I don't think I've ever regretted anything as much as I regret leaving without knowing your name, or how to contact you._

She'd written that. A sentiment that Inuyasha agreed with wholeheartedly but hadn't expected to be reciprocated. Clearly she'd sensed the connection between them, however brief it had been. Clearly she was as eager to meet him, to _know _him, as he was her.

Inuyasha read over the message once more—pausing only to re-read the part about him being _breathtakingly gorgeous, _which was flattering as hell even if the bizarre woman had put herself down in the process—and without another thought clicked on the reply button, which opened a message tab.

After a moment of staring at the blank space, Inuyasha tipped his head back and groaned. How the hell was he supposed to respond? _Hey, it's the guy you laughed at, remember me? Obviously you have since I'm replying to your Craigslist post. Anyway, how about that coffee? By the way, I'm totally not a 90 year old pervert pretending to be the guy you wrote about, I swear. _

Inuyasha groaned again. He _sucked _at words—written or otherwise. His motto had always been 'why talk about it when you could do something about it instead'? Words were ineffective. They were easily misunderstood, misinterpreted, misused. Actions, on the other hand, weren't so easy to get wrong.

Unfortunately, Inuyasha had no other choice but to suck it up and hope for the best. He settled on sending brief response—succinct and to the point. In the end, his message was exactly three sentences long, but after scrutinizing it carefully, he sighed and sent it.

Now he just had to wait.

**x-x-x**

Inuyasha was coming home from work the following evening when his phone beeped, indicating he'd just received an email. He pulled it out and turned on the screen as he took the stairs three at a time, the wooden boards creaking beneath his shoes.

He frowned in confusion when he didn't recognize the sender—someone named _Kagome H.—_but it faded when he read the subject line. _That _he remembered vividly—he'd written it himself.

The phone nearly slipped from his fingers when he fumbled for his keys, and he cursed himself for behaving like a moron. With an irritated huff he entered his apartment with far more poise, locked the door behind him, and actually made a detour to the kitchen for a glass of water before making a bee-line for the couch where his computer sat.

Claws tapped against his knee as he waited for the laptop to wake from its sleep and the wi-fi to connect. And then he was drawing the bulky device to his lap and opening G-mail in a new tab, where the closed message stood out like a beacon.

Inuyasha opened it without another thought. And then blinked, because rather than the lengthy message he'd expected, there was only a few short sentences.

—=—

_Hi, Inuyasha. You're the ninth person to contact me so far so let's cut to the chase. If you're really the guy from the station then tell me what color pants I was wearing. If you don't remember—which is fine, I wasn't exactly looking at "yours" either—then send me a v-chat invite and we can talk. It should be fine since I expect you want to meet up anyway, right?_

_Sorry to sound brusque, but needs must and all that. _

_Sincerely, _

_Kagome H. _

—=—

After reading the message for the second time, Inuyasha's shoulders slumped and his ears went flat. The _ninth_? No fucking wonder she sounded so short. He sighed and gazed at the screen again, considering. He had no idea what color pants she'd been wearing. They were dark, he remembered that much, but that was hardly going to cut it.

Video-chat it was.

Inuyasha took a moment run his tongue over his teeth to make sure nothing from lunch had decided to stick around. He rubbed his knuckles at the corners of his eyes, patted his hair down, and removed his tie, not wanting to look like a slob with it loose but not feeling all that inclined to tighten it again, either. Feeling both presentable and embarrassed by his behavior, he sent the invite and waited, angling the camera on top of one raised knee to show his face—and ears.

Anticipation and anxiety warred for dominance as a ringing sound blared through his speakers and a black box appeared on the screen, larger than the small one he featured in. After thirteen torturous seconds of feeling like his stomach was tying itself in knots, the black screen flickered and a face appeared, blurry at first, then clearer.

"_Oh_," the woman on the screen said, her eyes widening. _"It's you. It's actually you. Holy shit. Crap! Sorry, I meant crap. Uh, hi."_

Despite his agitation, Inuyasha felt the corners of his lips quirk up at her rambling. His grin spread wider when red bloomed across her cheeks and she ducked her head in evident embarrassment.

She was _adorable. _

"Hi," Inuyasha said, more breathily than he would have preferred. "And it's fine. Swear all you want. I'm hardly one to point fingers."

She glanced up at that, familiar grey eyes peering up at him through long lashes. Her face was still flushed but she did lift her chin and square her shoulders, as if to mentally prepare herself for their conversation.

Inuyasha couldn't blame her; he was feeling much the same.

"_I'm trying to stop,"_ she admitted in a tinny voice_. "It's not really ladylike, but old habits die pretty hard, so. Anyway," _she switched topics_, "Hi. Um. I'm Kagome, and can I just express how glad I am that you replied? I honestly wasn't expecting you to. Especially after the last guy with the fake ears—"_

Inuyasha twitched. "Fake ears?"

With a roll of her eyes that would have impressed Sango, Kagome said exasperatedly, "_Fake Ears. Some old guy actually bought what I'm pretty sure were cat ears, probably leftover from Halloween or something, and had the gall to tell me they were real and I must not have seen them too closely, being on the other side of the platform and all. So then I told him, 'Even so, I'm pretty sure I could tell the difference between silver and orange' and he got all huffy and accused me of leading him on and then hung up."_

His expression must have conveyed exactly what he was thinking because the woman snorted and said, _"My thoughts exactly. And believe it or not, he wasn't even the _worst_."_

A question hovered at the tip of his tongue, but it slunk back when an unfamiliar woman's voice called,_ "Kagome?", _and the face in the screen turned around. At once Inuyasha's eyes dropped to the delicate curve of her neck, arched in a way that begged to be claimed even though he knew it wasn't deliberate. Still, heat pooled in his stomach at the sight and he had to force himself to tear his gaze away.

"_Sorry, Inuyasha, one moment_," she said in a rush, oblivious to the way he way he was staring at her, or the way his heartbeat spiked when she said his name.

Knowing he was being ridiculous did little to prevent him from carrying on that way.

"_Yeah, Ayame?" _Kagome asked the person who remained out of sight. It would be a lie to say that he didn't feel a little smug at the undertone of irritation he detected in her words.

"_Sorry to interrupt, but your mom just called? She said something about dinner…?"_

Inuyasha studied the side of her face as it tightened in confusion, only to open up a second later in shock. "_Oh shit!"_ Kagome swore, bringing up her hands to clutch at her head. _"Oh man, I completely forgot! Mama is going to _kill_ me! Shit!" _The woman swiveled her face in Inuyasha's direction, expression contorted in panic.

"_I am _so_ sorry, but I really need to go! Can we re-schedule? I'm really, really—"_

"It's fine," Inuyasha cut her off before she could waste more time apologizing needlessly. "I don't mind."

Kagome visibly sagged with relief. _"Thanks, Inuyasha," _she breathed, and his heartbeat skipped once more at her use of his name. _"When can we do this again?"_

He'd been about to say, "Sometime tomorrow is fine," when the words seized in his throat. As he watched her vibrate in her seat, staring at him with a look of anxious hope, he realized that he wanted more than _this. _Looking at her, talking with her, through a camera lens…it wasn't enough. It was no different than the last time he'd seen her, with a double-track between them.

Close, yet not close enough.

He pushed down all thoughts of him being too impatient, too forward, and cleared his throat. "Listen, Kagome," he started. She wilted a little in front of him, and realizing how that must have sounded he hurriedly continued, "Why don't we, uh, meet up?"

A startled blink. _"Meet up? As…in-person?"_

It was an exercise in restraint not to roll his eyes. "Yeah, that. If you want," he tacked on.

Inuyasha expected some hesitancy on her part, or at the very least some deliberation. Instead, she brightened before his eyes like a flower unfurling beneath the sun and beamed at him, that same dimpled smile he remembered only for him.

"_I definitely want!"_ she said excitedly, tucking a black curl behind her ear._ "When and where?"_

"Would tomorrow be alright?" he asked hesitantly, unsure if that made him seem desperate. Which, who was he kidding, he kind of was. Just the thought of meeting with her—of hearing the tenor of her voice in person, of finally having a scent to brand to memory—made anticipation quiver beneath his skin.

Her curls bounced as she nodded_. "Tomorrow's fine! Uh, would the evening be alright? Say… five-ish?"_

"Five is fine. Where?"

That brought a look of contemplation to her face. A look which Inuyasha was willing to bet would soon become a favorite of his. The way her lips pursed and slanted sideways, and her neck arched to support her head as it cocked to the side, and her eyes took on a distant cast, more dreamy than vacant…

He curled his claws into fists and slipped them beneath his thighs so he wouldn't do something stupid, like trace the lines of her neck or the pucker of her bottom lip with his clawtip.

"_How about Union Square?"_ she suggested suddenly, and Inuyasha hastily looked away in an attempt to hide how completely riveted he'd been by her just then. _"We can start off with coffee? There's Starbucks, or Irving Place if you prefer your cafés less corporate-run?"_

"Start off?" he blurted.

At once Kagome's cheeks darkened and her eyes lowered_. "Well, yeah. I mean…it's a date, right?" she asked unsurely, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth._

"Yeah," he said, suddenly feeling shy. He shoved down his desire to grin like an idiot and coughed. "A date. That's…exactly what it is."

"_Good."_ Kagome seemed relieved, but it was replaced a second later by that same sunny smile. _"And afterwards…I guess we can just do whatever."_

"Whatever sounds good."

"_Yeah,"_ Kagome said with a small smile.

He hadn't realized they'd been sitting there, staring at each other, until a pointed cough snapped the connection, shattering the moment, and Kagome looked away. "Oh, right! The dinner!" She turned to him again, apology—and not a little regret—written on her face_. "I really need to go now. So. Tomorrow?"_

He nodded once.

"_Okay. Uh, bye Inuyasha." _

"Bye, Kagome."

Another quick smile, and then her face blurred the screen until it went black and the call came to an end. Inuyasha closed the window, then the Internet tab, and then shut the computer off altogether.

"I am so screwed," he told the empty room. The only reply he received was a depressing silence. "Keh," he muttered, standing up. His rumbling stomach led him to kitchen, where he opened one cabinet and started sifting through it, determined to fill the emptiness in his stomach that he wasn't entirely sure was solely due to hunger.

Some minutes later and his table held three steaming cups of ramen. Inuyasha threw himself into a chair, snapped the chopsticks apart (because only heathens ate ramen with forks), and went about devouring his dinner.

When he was done, and the non-reusables were discarded in the trash, and he was settled once more into the comfort of his couch, television remote in claw, Inuyasha finally allowed himself to acknowledge what he'd desperately been trying to ignore.

His hunger for food was sated, but there was another hunger mounting within him, something hollow and aching with sharp edges that seemed to pull on his insides. A hunger that Inuyasha was becoming increasingly certain wouldn't be sated until he saw a certain gorgeous someone, with eyes like silver and a smile like gold, again.

"I am so screwed," he groaned, dropping one arm over his eyes to obscure his view of the pebbled ceiling.

And the thing that Inuyasha found most perplexing (because he didn't even _know _the woman) and most frustrating (because this wasn't _like_ him) was that he couldn't even bring himself to care.

Somehow in the scant minutes they'd interacted, Kagome Higurashi had carved a hole inside his chest and made herself a home there, and rather than claw her out—which he would have done had he been _sane_—Inuyasha only wanted to stitch the skin back up and keep her there forever.

It didn't make sense…and yet, he couldn't remember anything feeling more right in his entire life.

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><p><strong>AN:** _To be continued. _

Thanks for reading. Feedback is welcome, as always.


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